THEO’S PARABLE: The Cathedral Is
Slated for demolition
At night few leave, but this night in my dream,
I come to the Cathedral, hopeful asylum.
Cardboard was nailed in over the door; 3 words:
“Slated for demolition”
Now it is the impulse of night that makes
me lift the crowbar. As one who cuts the cattle
out from a pile of bones, horror & hooray,
so this tangle of stone saints and crucifix,
placard-passion scenes, sterile chalice & haggard glass:
Add to the bits by my boots
And I smash, panting delight in demolition.
Aiming for faces, using what Warhol and Nietzsche left around,
bash in and stump out of shape
like so much graffiti on the shithouse wall.
The smell; only from that cell,
Takes me from the American dream,
back to the autisms of concrete
cracking up and down cage to cage.
At dawn night reassembles.
By noon dusk builds midnight.
Only an unrelenting being
calls me in my head.
I dance on the doctor’s desk.
It’s there on my head,
running down my face:
words in fecal print.
Guards force me in water that boils skin off.
I’ve gone back, to smash again: smile at change.
I come across right in the nave
a grave full of lovely biomass:
I put my hand down low deeply in this pit.
Theo, you dug it and threw your Muse in it,
crushed into crumbs & beaten of purple.
By what I am I call for your being to be.
Hit the maggot-majority off you.
It’s a mirror in which minds sit, eating their reflections.
In demolishing, there’s more & more always;
so rise, laugh with me
at this cathedral slated for Demolition.
Iceman Parable
After picking fruit, came empty stomachs.
We followed the men, to the Priest
half-covered in silk and half in shadows,
his voice quiet, assuring our working limbs
God rewards empty stomachs.
Then, when I lost care, the Father charged:
‘Men don’t sleep with men.’
And then, my mind ran like deer.
In the bush, enlarged, I pulled my pants;
I looked, there was hair: this made me a man.
Shouldn’t I want a woman?
Only I look at Tomas. Then came feeling:
tongue, hands, eyes & voice
make love in pandemonium.
After the service, dinner: apples.
In bed, I grapple; even so, I have only
to think about Tomas; I touch
the mistake, thicken, the haggard doubt;
I lean down, look and start:
I make a man using hands,
can I be a man with women’s need?
Pieces of the crime
drip down dark blankets,
warm scrawny drops
his dubiety solicits.
Las Venas Abiertas de Piety:
I chose to remain silent, praying that night
sliding down like a root in the heat of earth,
clutching mineral & men’s sweat to my breast.
Old doubt, with old skin, peels in serial exodus.
Inflexible growing misremembers the man
of barbed perfection and obedient offspring;
enigmas sprout in flesh at the brink of devilish Tomas.
Tomas accepted. The Priest, head-bowed,
The sleep-over forms a cross
approaches and on his chest. About his
the sound robe are words
a man
of doors in drip-drop
are locking loudly. evening-letters.
Yo no voy a tomar ‘ice.’ Fue divertido: “ICE”.
PARABLE OF CONSTRUCTING A PARABLE
On my way here, my mouth shuts.
Your hush sends me this invitation
to go to hell. Sage, hemp & herbicide
permeate the sheets; I fell
failed, another Rome but also
another Constantinople: what is
cut to bits, reassembles
while whispers strut.
I lean a bit to the right:
did you think about him
when we were in bed?
In the little room, you stretch me
hush by hush.
(And that’s not how it should be.)
And in the sky, mist keeps the moon
in a closet; but it’s different
than the mist of childhood fancies:
hush-by-hush, you stuff me
in a fog of adult falsettos.
Your pollen flew to Hades’ bee.
I laugh. On the next path,
I’ll taste him, Poet: the pollen
from all those honeyed Muses,
each goddess giggling like schizophrenics.
My eyes drip-drop down:
on puddles airplanes chop the stars.
Beyond these pits, I watch
the craft take you away.
On my way here, I
stay for Virgin’s Blood:
the wine made at Saint Michael’s Pub.
I’m afraid of your thinking.
Drinking alone with A Key,
you flew to Texas, to join a man for Christmas:
calling me to stop calling you.
I only know there are hints,
prickly texts tugging at me child-like.
I pick you up at the airport, what did you do to me?
I had to find out, no other choice.
(And that’s how it should be.)
I lean a bit to the left:
did you think about me when you shared his bed?
A bee goes buzz to a dead plant, I only know
we shall share our lives, but you & I
shall not build a life together.
The bee goes back up, no other choice.